At the 2010 general election, Morley and Outwood was won by Ed Balls of the Labour Party, who had been MP for Normanton since 2005, and served as Labour's Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer from 2011 to 2015. Balls narrowly lost the seat at the 2015 general election to the Conservative Party candidate Andrea Jenkyns which was described by Larry Elliott of The Guardian as a "Portillo moment".[2] The 2015 general election result gave the Conservatives that year their sixth-most marginal majority of their 331 seats won, by percentage of majority.[3] Third parties have not polled strongly in the seat to date — the combined votes of the two largest UK parties' candidates exceeded 72.9% of the total in 2010 and 2015, and in 2017 accounted for 97.4% of the total vote.

From the City of Wakefield: Stanley and Outwood East; Wrenthorpe and Outwood West.[5]

In the September 2016 Boundary Commission constituency proposals, this seat is set to disappear and its territory split between two new constituencies; Batley and Morley, & Normanton, Castleford and Outwood.

Election results for the Morley and Outwood UK Parliamentary constituency from 2010 to 2017

The 2017 snap election saw the Green Party stand aside in the Morley and Outwood constituency following discussions with the Labour candidate, in an attempt to prevent a victory for the Conservative candidate.[8] However, UKIP also didn't field a candidate in this constituency and other seats across the country that had small majorities, which may have been what helped Andrea Jenkyns retained the seat for the Conservatives with an increased majority.